On Keystone XL route, states allow different risks, reap different benefitshttp://www.hcn.org/articles/on-keystone-xl-route-states-allow-different-risks-reap-different-benefits
An InsideClimate News comparison shows that, of the six states the proposed pipeline moves through, only Montana has authority to re-route the pipeline, and Kansas has given TransCanada a 10-year tax exemption.This article was first published by InsideClimate News.

If the Keystone XL oil pipeline were approved today, residents in the
six states along its route would not receive equal treatment from
TransCanada, the company that wants to build the project.

The differences are particularly striking when it comes to tax
revenue and environmental protection. States with stronger regulations
have won protections for their citizens, while other states sometimes
focused more on meeting TransCanada's needs.

In Kansas, for example, lawmakers gave TransCanada a 10-year tax
exemption, which means the state won't receive any property tax revenue
from the pipeline. Meanwhile, each of the other five states—Montana,
South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas—would earn between $14
million and $63 million a year, according to U.S. State Department estimates.

When it comes to route changes and protection for landowners,
residents of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas have fared the worst, because
their states haven't created any regulations to safeguard their
interests.

"All the power is in the hands of the pipeline companies," said Chris
Wilson, an independent environmental consultant from Texas who opposes
the Keystone XL. Landowners along the route "are really screwed…there's
no one in the government they can call for help."

The Obama administration put the Keystone XL on hold
in November, saying it needed another year to reassess the
environmental risks the project could pose. Republican lawmakers,
meanwhile, are trying to force
the president to make his decision by February 21. The pipeline would
move oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Because the Keystone XL would cross state boundaries, both federal
and state agencies are involved in its regulation. The U.S. Pipeline and
Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)
handles safety issues, such as pipeline thickness and operating
pressure. Individual states are responsible for pipeline siting, the
process that determines a pipeline's exact route within state borders.

But only the state of Montana has chosen to exercise that power,
leaving citizens who object to the pipeline's path in other states no
option but to shell out money for a court battle, or appeal to local
officials who often lack the resources and experience to challenge a
major corporation.

In Montana, however, the state's Department of Environmental Quality
used a decades-old siting act to minimize environmental damage along
the route. TransCanada has rerouted more than 100 miles of the Keystone
XL in response to agency and landowner concerns. If the pipeline is
approved, the company also must post a bond so funds are available to
repair construction-related damage.

DEQ staffer Greg Hallsten, who worked on Keystone XL siting, said
that although TransCanada sometimes objected to the agency's reroutes,
its complaints were overruled.

"We have [siting] authority in the state," he said. "Our authority's never been challenged along those lines."

TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the vast differences in
pipeline regulation reflect the political landscape of each state. "We
appreciate that each state has their own guidelines," he said. "It's not
up to us to modify or create legislation. We're working with the state
governments to meet [their] guidelines and get this project approved."

Other states could follow Montana's lead by pressuring their
legislators to create pipeline regulation, said Pat Parenteau, a Vermont
Law School professor who studies land use and environmental policy. "If
there's a popular enough demand," it can be done, he said.

That's what happened in Nebraska, where residents worked for years
to persuade their lawmakers to reroute the Keystone XL out of the
ecologically sensitive Sandhills. Farmers and ranchers picketed the
governor's mansion, traveled to Washington, D.C. and repeatedly called
for a special session to draft siting regulations for interstate
pipelines. As the momentum grew, TransCanada offered Nebraska a $100 million dollar spill bond for the Sandhills region—a protection it didn't offer any of the other states.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman finally called a special session in November, where bills were passed
to move the pipeline out of the Sandhills and to give the Public
Service Commission authority to site future oil pipelines (excluding
Keystone XL). TransCanada is now working with state environmental
officials to establish a new route for its pipeline.

What Nebraskans have done is very significant, said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause.
Legislators won't act unless they feel outside pressure from
constituents, she said, so getting those bills passed is "no small
accomplishment…Nebraska citizens clearly proved this can be done."

----

Few Protections from Eminent Domain

Despite the new regulations in Nebraska, landowners there, like
landowners in all the Keystone XL states, have felt helpless when
TransCanada used eminent domain to take their land.

All six states have given the company the power of eminent domain.
While the eminent domain laws vary from state to state, they generally
allow projects built for a "public" good—including railroads,
transmission lines and highways—to use private land after paying
landowners a fair price that's determined by the courts. But the laws
aren't specific about what "public" means, and pipeline opponents say
Keystone XL shouldn't be allowed to use eminent domain because it's not
serving the United States public.

Harlan Hentges, an attorney who represented an Oklahoma family that
challenged the taking of their land, says TransCanada is a foreign
company transporting foreign goods (crude oil) across the U.S. for
export. "To me it's an outrage from beginning to end," he said.

Montana is the only state that offers its residents some protection from eminent domain.

Its siting act requires that pipelines be built on public land
whenever it's economically feasible. As a result, 77 percent of the
pipeline's route through Montana falls on private land, while that
number rises to more than 92 percent in the other five states. In Texas,the entire pipeline is routed through private land.

Montana also doesn't allow companies to take landowners to court
until the DEQ gives a project a final stamp of approval, known as a
Certificate of Compliance. In early December, the DEQ's Hallsten toldInsideClimate News that the agency didn't plan to issue the certificate
to TransCanada unless the federal government approved the pipeline. But
Gov. Brian Schweitzer overruled the agency
on Dec. 15 when he announced that TransCanada had met the siting act's
requirements and that the DEQ would issue the certificate within a few
weeks.

Sue Kelso, the Oklahoma landowner who hired Hentges to challenge
TransCanada's use of eminent domain on her family farm, said she feels
abandoned by her state officials.

Butthe Oklahoma Corporation Commission—the agency in charge of pipeline
regulation—has little control over interstate pipelines. Commission
spokesman Matt Skinner said the agency's role is limited to remediation
after oil spills.

Kelso's troubles began when a TransCanada land agent offered her
$3,000 for a permanent easement on her property. Kelso said the agent
claimed the pipeline would carry regular crude oil, but she soon found
that Keystone XL would transport the tar sands oil known as diluted
bitumen, or dilbit. Unlike conventional crude, the exact chemical
composition of dilbit remains a trade secret. There's little research on dilbit and no peer-reviewed studies on how it affects pipeline corrosion.

Kelso's concerns escalated after an Enbridge pipeline spilled dilbit
into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in July 2010. The Environmental
Protection Agency doesn't expect the cleanup of that spill to be
completed until the end of 2012.

"I live in fear that this pipeline will go through and ruin all the water," Kelso said.

When Kelso refused to sign TransCanada's contract, she said the land
agent threatened to use eminent domain. "She told me [to] either take
what they offered or they'd condemn our property and take it anyway."
That's when Kelso hired Hentges.

In August, TransCanada voluntarily rerouted the pipeline around
Kelso's property. Hentges believes the company wanted to avoid going to
court, where the case might set a precedent and open the floodgates to
eminent domain challenges in other Keystone XL states.

In Texas, property rights activist Debra Medina is lobbying legislators to clarify the state's eminent domain law. State law grants
the operators of common carrier pipelines—defined as "to or for the
public for hire"—the power of eminent domain, but it's unclear if the
word "public" refers to Texans or the public at large, Medina said. She
asked the Railroad Commission and the Texas attorney general's office
for clarification but never received an answer.

Everyone knows that Texans value property ownership, she said. "And
yet, in our law, we've given eminent domain authority to private
businesses and nobody's making sure the businesses who exercise that
power meet the necessary criteria."

----

No Comfort for One of Landowners' Greatest Fears

Neither the federal government nor any of the Keystone XLstates have
offered landowners much protection from one of their greatest fears: an
oil spill that affects their property.

Federal regulations require pipeline companies to file oil spill
response plans, but TransCanada hasn't completed its plan for the
Keystone XL. TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the plan will be
finalized once the entire project, including the new route through
Nebraska, is confirmed.

Even after the plan is released, it will be difficult for landowners
along the route to examine the document, said Carl Weimer, executive
director of the Pipeline Safety Trust,
a nonprofit that promotes fuel transportation safety. The spill plans
are created by pipeline companies and given directly to PHMSA for
review, so there's no opportunity for public input. A PHMSA spokesman
said the secrecy is necessary because the plans contain potentially
sensitive information about public safety and homeland security.

Montana rancher Darrell Garoutte thinks the public has a right to
review those documents. "After the BP [Gulf spill] fiasco, I'm concerned
that any plan without public scrutiny will be lacking in most areas."

Weimer said that some states, including Washington and Alaska, have
taken steps to make emergency response information more transparent. But
none of the Keystone XL states are included in that group, he said.

Sandy Barnick, whose farm near Glendive, Mont., would be crossed by
Keystone XL, said the remoteness of her rural county, which she
describes as "in the middle of nowhere," has heightened her fear of
pipeline accidents and spills.

TransCanada toldInsideClimate News that the company is ready to
respond to emergencies. "[We've] procured and stored equipment, hired
personnel and contractors along the length of the pipeline specifically
to ensure we are capable of responding quickly," said spokesman Shawn
Howard.

But Zona Vig worries that the company will have trouble responding to
an emergency on her South Dakota family ranch, which is 100 miles from
the nearest hospital. The region is crisscrossed by dirt roads that
become impassable during rains, Vig said. "What happens if you have a
leak? How are you going to get people out here, [especially] in a
blizzard when the wind is blowing and the snow's coming down?"

Vig and her neighbors are accustomed to taking care of themselves.
Her husband pilots a small plane that's sometimes used for medical
emergencies, and her son is part of the county's volunteer fire
department. But there are no other oil pipelines in Meade County, and
Vig said they're not prepared to deal with a spill.

Barnick, the Montana farmer, says state officials should be doing
more to address landowner concerns. She blames their inaction on the
fact that most of the pipeline's route runs through counties with small
populations and little political clout. "I feel [like] we're
dispensable."

Pipeline Tax Revenue Varies By State

Some landowners say the promise of tax revenue has made state and
local officials blind to citizen concerns. According to the State
Department's Final Environmental Impact Statement,
the pipeline would generate property taxes ranging from $14 million per
year for Oklahoma to $63 million per year for Montana. But experts say
actual tax revenues may vary significantly from those estimates.

The State Department calculations for Montana were done without an
accurate understanding of the state's tax laws, said Ed Caplis, director
of Tax Policy and Research at the Montana Department of Revenue. While
the State Department projects tax revenues of $63 million a year,
Caplis' department's assessment, based on data provided by TransCanada,
puts the number at $80 million.

South Dakota taxes pipelines based on the income they generate, so
"it's rather difficult assessing a future project," said Mike
Houdyshell, director of the Property and Special Tax Division at the
South Dakota Department of Revenue. Pipelines don't make any income
until they're operational, and that income is dependent on market forces
during the time of operation.

Houdyshell's department wasn't involved in the State Department
property tax estimates. Their only assessment for Keystone XL is an
estimate of the property tax for Harding County (one of nine counties in
the pipeline's path), which comes out to about one million dollars. That's substantially less than the State Department estimate of $3.3 million dollars for Harding County.

An existing TransCanada pipeline, simply called Keystone, has generated far less in property taxes for South Dakota than TransCanada originally projected.

"We don't know how [TransCanada] arrived at those numbers,"
Houdyshell said. "Obviously they were overstated to some extent—we don't
really know why."

----

The state of Kansas stands to gain the least financially from the
Keystone XL. Its situation is unique because the first Keystone pipeline
already runs through Kansas, and part of that pipeline would act as a
bridge between two sections of the new pipeline. However, the Keystone
XL would increase the amount of dilbit flowing through Kansas, so
TransCanada would need to build additional pump stations in the state to
handle the new capacity (up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day).

When TransCanada began planning the Keystone pipeline in 2005, Marion
County commissioner Dan Holub was one of the few Kansas officials who
opposed it. "I'm scared to death of what they're running through there,"
he said, referring to the unknown dangers of dilbit.

Holub tried to persuade state officials to help address landowners concerns. But instead, the Kansas legislature passed a series of bills
to incentivize energy processing, including one that granted large
pipelines a property tax exemption for up to 10 years. The new pump
stations for Keystone XL would likely receive the same tax exemption.

Holub says TransCanada didn't need the tax cut, which cost his county
some much-needed funds. According to the Kansas Department of Revenue,
the Keystone pipeline would have brought $2.9 million in property taxes
to Marion County in 2011.

But State Sen. Jay Emler, who voted for the tax cut, said the bill
guaranteed a steady source of crude oil for the state's refineries and
was meant to encourage TransCanada to build the pipeline through Kansas.
"One of their lobbyists came to my office in 2005 and said, 'If we
don't get this tax exemption, we won't bring the pipeline through
Kansas.'"

Emler said a recent letter from a TransCanada lobbyist says the tax
exemption was just one of several factors in deciding where to build the
pipeline, so the company might have brought Keystone through Kansas
anyway. "Hindsight is always 20/20," Emler said. If the legislature had
known in 2005 that TransCanada didn't need the exemption, "why would we
have given it to them?"

The Kansas Department of Revenue has challenged
the tax exemption and the matter is now before the Kansas Court of Tax
Appeals. If TransCanada loses its exemption, a court spokesperson said,
the company would have to pay all its back taxes.

TransCanada also got a tax break in South Dakota when the first
Keystone pipeline was routed through the state. South Dakota legislators
passed a bill in the 1990s to grant large energy projects, including
ethanol plants and wind blade factories, a refund on a 4 percent
contractor excise tax. The law wasn't intended for oil pipelines, said
Scott Heidepriem, a former state senator who now runs a law firm in
Sioux Falls, but it was so loosely worded that TransCanada qualified.

Heidepriem said the first Keystone pipeline is eligible for more than
$30 million dollars from the tax refund, though records from the South
Dakota Department of Revenue show that the company had claimed just $2.7 million
as of September 2011. Heidepriem argues that TransCanada didn't need
the tax break because the pipeline would have come through the state
anyway. It doesn't make sense to give them all this money while the
legislature cuts the state's education budget, he said.

In 2008, Heidepriem represented a group of landowners along the first
Keystone pipeline who fought TransCanada's use of eminent domain. The
landowners eventually settled, but details of the settlement remain
confidential.

The South Dakota legislature tightened the language on the tax refund
law after the first Keystone pipeline was built. The Keystone XL would
be eligible for no more than $10 million dollars, and the program will
expire at the end of 2012.

But South Dakota's lawmakers haven't taken action on something
landowners along the route have been lobbying for: A bond to make sure
their property would be cleaned up in the event of a spill. Between 2008
and 2010, the legislature failed on three separate occasions to approve
a spill bond that would have imposed a several-cents-per-barrel tax on
Keystone XL oil. If the money wasn't used, it would have been returned
to TransCanada.

Vig helped lobby for the bond as a member of a grassroots group called Dakota Rural Action.
She described the experience like "walking into a brick wall."
TransCanada fought it tooth and nail, she said, "and our legislators
listened to them and voted against it."

Lisa Song is a reporter forInsideClimate News, a non-profit journalism group focusing on climate news..

]]>No publisherEnergy & Industry2012/01/10 01:00:00 GMT-7ArticleMount St. Helens: A world apart?http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.4/mount-st.-helens-a-world-apart
Washington's Mount St. Helens is protected as a living volcanic-recovery laboratory, but a completely "natural" environment has never been possible.The hummocks of Mount St. Helens' northern slope look decidedly haphazard. Barren, knuckle-shaped hills alternate with groves of red alder. A straggly willow grows from a mound of rocky soil. Patches of yellow moss are broken by wild strawberry blossoms and the occasional flare of red paintbrush. The effect is unsettling, as if the landscape were the result of a giant habitat-components lottery.

Seated on the banks of a small pond in mid-May, ecologist Charlie Crisafulli stuffs a frog into a sandwich bag. "Trap three," Crisafulli says to a field assistant taking notes. He holds a ruler to the animal and gently pinches it so its limbs splay out. "Length of 152 (millimeters), and snout, vent, 74 (millimeters). We have a bulbous male."

Crisafulli releases the frog into the murky water with a plop. Twenty-four hours ago, his team planted funnel traps in six different ponds; now, they're cataloguing the captured amphibians.

In the 31 years since a volcanic eruption obliterated the mountain's forests and showered its lakes with burning debris, amphibians have returned with astounding speed. The Western toad and Pacific treefrog led the way, and by 1990, all the pond-dwelling amphibians that typically inhabit southern Washington's Cascade Range were somewhere on the volcano. Part of that abundance is due to the post-eruption environment: It's taken longer for predators to return, and there's less competition for habitat. It also helps that the hummocks region lies within the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, a 110,000-acre area around the summit where the landscape has been left mostly untouched. It's essentially a living laboratory of how an ecosystem recovers without human tinkering.

That's the theory, anyway. But the monument has never truly stood in isolation; its borders are dotted with timber farms and its rivers flow past a fish hatchery and several towns. As a result, human-influenced changes have sometimes clashed -- and blended -- with the mountain's "natural" recovery. A push here, a snip there, and what has emerged is a landscape of surprises, one that blurs the line between expected regrowth, deliberate engineering and random chance.

In 1979, St. Helens was postcard-perfect, a snow-capped cone rising 9,700 feet above southern Washington. Over 500,000 people visited that year to hike, hunt, camp and fish. Farther downslope, the mountain hosted a thriving timber industry.

The earthquakes began in March of 1980. For two months they rocked the mountain, as magma pushed its northern slope outward. Then, on May 18, that slope collapsed in the biggest landslide in recorded history. A mixture of steam, rocks and hot gas exploded sideways from the crater, charging down the mountainside and prompting huge mudflows as it melted ice and snow.

The mountain's lush, coniferous forests were flattened. Fifty-seven people died, and nearby communities feared further damage from subsequent landslides. Many thought it would be decades before the mountain resembled its former self. But the volcano was also a scientific gold mine, and in 1982, Congress passed the National Volcanic Monument Act. Everything within the new monument -- which encompassed some of the worst-hit federal, state and private lands -- became Forest Service land, necessitating complex land swaps. Although the monument is open to the public, mining and tree harvesting were banned within its borders, along with off-road motor vehicles. Some 25 percent of the monument received further protection as a research area where visitors are restricted to specific trails. So it was that the monument became a haven for science, education and recreation, allowing "geologic forces and ecological succession to continue substantially unimpeded."

Today, the contrast between the monument and its surroundings is absolute. Thick conifers turn the slopes of bordering Weyerhaeuser lands a uniform dark green; metal signs along the road read Planted 1992; Planted 1986; Planted 2001. Meanwhile, the monument is a checkerboard of habitats, each marking a different stage of ecological recovery: dazzling fields of wildflowers, a barren pumice plain, saplings in the hummocks. For Crisafulli, it's this diversity that makes the monument special: Because of the sheer variety of available niches, it may now be more biologically diverse than before the eruption. That's partly why Crisafulli has worked on the mountain since 1980, first as a graduate student monitoring the return of small mammals, then later as an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service.

----

It's late morning, and Crisafulli runs around his crew's loose collection of tents, stuffing waders and notebooks into a dry bag. He has the beard and baseball cap typical of many field scientists; a long ponytail hangs down his back.

As we hike toward a set of ponds through morning drizzle, Crisafulli launches into tour-guide mode. That yellowish moss is Racomitrium canescens. Those green-leafed trees are red alders, the yellow-leafed ones cottonwoods. Waist-high shrubs with crimson branches are willows. "We're really walking on the guts of St. Helens," Crisafulli explains. Every rock and handful of dirt that forms these hummocks came from the landslide that preceded the eruption.

As water collected in the hollows between hummocks, 150 new ponds formed. Some were no more than large puddles. Others, like Coldwater Lake, filled entire valleys. Thirty eventually washed out or overflowed. Such change could be expected, explains Monument Manager Tom Mulder. "We're learning what Mother Nature does" when left alone. Ultimately, however, fears of flooding forced officials to put public safety before the monument's natural processes.

Before 1980, Spirit Lake, on the north face of the mountain, held Pacific salmon that had swum upstream through the Columbia, Cowlitz and Toutle rivers. But the landslide buried the outlet from Spirit to Toutle. As lake levels rose, officials worried that the natural dam could catastrophically breach, setting off a chain reaction in dozens of other ponds and sending a massive flood down the Toutle, straight into Castle Rock, Longview and Kelso -- downstream communities with a combined population of 50,000.

So the Army Corps of Engineers built a mile-long concrete tunnel within the monument, allowing Spirit Lake to discharge into South Coldwater Creek, which flows west into Coldwater Lake. There, the Corps was forced to build another drainage outlet -- this time a cobble-lined channel -- connecting Coldwater Lake to Coldwater Creek.

The tunnel ensured that fish would never again find their own way to Spirit Lake, but it pales in comparison to what happened next. Landslide debris had increased the sediment load on the North Fork of the Toutle River more than a hundredfold, and the Corps feared it would raise riverbeds and facilitate future flooding. Since the agency is charged with flood protection, it built a sediment-retention structure -- a dam that slows the river so sediment can settle while clear water passes downstream. Although the structure lies a few miles outside the monument, it prevented migratory fish from spawning upstream.

That was the start of fish trucking. Since 1989, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has trapped fish below the dam and transported them to upstream tributaries. The goal is to re-establish historic runs of native fish, including coho salmon and steelhead (a form of migratory rainbow trout) which support sport and commercial fisheries. Both species are also listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The results so far are murky. In a 2008 study, scientists found that trucked coho salmon hadn't spread from the few tributaries where they were released. The situation was complicated by the presence of introduced fish: In 1989, Washington Fish and Wildlife stocked 30,000 non-native rainbow trout in Coldwater Lake to provide angling opportunities within the monument. Since then, some of the trout have spread to nearby tributaries and may have interbred with trucked wild steelhead and wild cutthroat trout. But without detailed molecular studies, scientists can't tell what's going on.

"There can be a variety of unintended consequences in our attempts to help fish recover," says Brian Fransen, a Weyerhaeuser biologist who helped design the 2008 study.

Additional non-native rainbow and brook trout were placed in monument lakes that had been fishless before the eruption. Those fish also colonized monument streams and are undoubtedly changing the local ecology, Crisafulli explains.

Between the fish stocking and sediment dam, "we didn't have the opportunity ... to understand what fish were doing naturally," says Fransen. It's now impossible to untangle the human influences from how the mountain might have recovered on its own, and the fish story will never be clear-cut.

After stumbling down a hill of bare volcanic rock, Crisafulli enters a cool alder grove. Thin branches form a canopy over a tiny pond; one tree bears the mark of beaver teeth. It's hard to believe that all this was once rubble. The mountain's recovery is remarkable, but Crisafulli prefers the term "ecological response." Recovery implies a resetting of the clock back to pre-1980, when in truth, the return of life has been anything but predictable. The eruption wiped some areas clean, while in others, select creatures -- pocket gophers, insects, sprouting plant seeds -- weathered the blast underground. The result was a patchwork that offered a variety of niches. "Helens revealed that the chaos was like a lifeboat for organisms," says monument scientist Peter Frenzen. "From the standpoint of a bird, or small mammal, or amphibian, (the jumble) provided places for things to get started."

"A lot of it is like the lottery," Crisafulli says. "What species arrived first, which ones thrive." Scientists call these stochastic events: unpredictable and with definite effects. And some are driven by humans: The growth of neighboring tree farms, for example, shut out the understory and pushed an excess of elk onto the monument, where the forage is still good and there are no natural predators. Today, signs of their destruction are everywhere: clumps of ripped-up moss, collapsed gopher tunnels, cottonwood trees like twisted bonsai. Mulder has seen stands of Douglas fir "so heavily browsed it looks like someone's been hitting them with a lawnmower."

These far-roaming herbivores also spread seeds with their droppings. At one point, Crisafulli drops to the ground and runs his hands through a clump of ordinary-looking grass. "White clover and an exotic grass from Eurasia," he observes -- invasive plants, courtesy of the elk.

Two years ago, the Forest Service launched a pilot program to increase hunting access within the monument. The idea wasn't to kill lots of elk (12 were bagged in the newly opened areas during the 2008-2009 hunting season) but to keep the "very natural elk horde" moving around and overgrazing less, says Mulder. Never mind that it's difficult to know what "natural" means in this case.

The monument might have been conceived as a living lab, but boundaries that exist on paper are fluid in the real world, and the ongoing experiment is far from controlled. It is, notes Mulder, "a constant landscape of change," one in the process of reclaiming itself. Back in 1981, for example, when Corps engineers built the artificial channel out of Coldwater Lake, they lined the sides with steep slopes of riprap. It was meant to force the water on a linear path, yet 30 years later, the stream has eroded, slicing below the riprap into the underlying dirt. To the casual observer today, there is nothing unnatural about the meandering stream flowing between the evenly-placed rock. Everything blends together and the stream flows on, carving its own sinuous path down the mountain.

]]>No publisherWildlife2011/03/14 00:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLife after lavahttp://www.hcn.org/issues/43.4/mount-st.-helens-a-world-apart/life-after-lava
Ecologist Charlie Crisafulli talks about the surprising biodiversity that has emerged in the wake of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.Ecologist Charlie Crisafulli talks about the surprising biodiversity that has emerged in the wake of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, and the ecological values of slowly regenerating landscapes.

In the title story of War Dances, a World War II veteran tries -- and fails -- to glorify the dying moments of a fellow soldier. "I was thinking about making up something as beautiful as I could," he tells the dead soldier's grandson. "But I couldn't think of anything good enough. And I didn't want to lie to you. So I have to be honest and say that your grandfather didn't say anything. He just died there in the sand. In silence."

The soldier's attempted lie is emblematic of War Dances, a collection of short stories and poems by novelist Sherman Alexie. This March, Alexie -- a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian whose recent young-adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was partly inspired by his own childhood -- received the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award. The same week, War Dances won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The book is filled with characters determined to edit the truth of their lives, whether out of denial or for the sake of art. The same grandson who hears the veteran's story proceeds to write a heroic poem about his father. And yet, after the last verse, he lets loose with a string of written corrections that destroys every assertion he makes in his poem.

As in Alexie's other books, such as The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Flight, the characters in War Dances wrestle with the nuances of Native American heritage. A Spokane Indian seeks out a black nurse rather than her white colleagues, hoping for better treatment. A white professor "addicted to the indigenous" yearns for the day when "Brown people" will seek revenge for centuries of oppression. And in a haunting story halfway between poem and prose, Alexie chronicles the last days of Chief Joseph as he watches his Nez Perce people dwindle in exile. It's this range of writing styles and characters that helped War Dances clinch the PEN/Faulkner Award; in the words of one of the judges, reading the book "was like watching a dance."

]]>No publisherCommunitiesBooks2010/08/16 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleSeeing the triceratops for the treeshttp://www.hcn.org/issues/42.12/seeing-the-triceratops-in-the-trees
Paleontologist Kirk Johnson works with artist Jan Vriesen to create vividly realized landscapes of what Colorado looked like millions of years ago.Name Kirk JohnsonAge 49Job Chief curator and vice president of research and collections, Denver Museum of Nature and ScienceFossil sites visited 1,600-plus across 24 countries and every continent over 30 years of researchWhy so many plant fossils are incomplete “Think about a cat: It’s not shedding its leg every day or dropping its head. (But) plants fall apart as they live, so you might find a (single) flower not attached to a plant.”On science versus art“At the end of the day, you realize that both art and science rely on creativity and imagination.”

When paleontologist Kirk Johnson approaches the information desk at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, the receptionists have no idea they're being tested. With his collared shirt and glasses, Johnson could pass for a well-dressed tourist or art critic. Feigning total ignorance, he asks for the pamphlets on ancient Colorado.

Ancient what?

"They're landscape paintings," Johnson clarifies. Ten of them, depicting Colorado's geologic past. "BIG." He doesn't mention that he was one of the people who helped create them.

"Oh, you mean the dinosaur art!" A drawer opens and out come the pamphlets.

Johnson grins at the irony. Moments later, standing before the canvases, he points to the only one with an animal of any size: a spiky stegosaurus surrounded by leafy bushes. The others harbor creatures like the ones in the children's game, "I Spy": a lion half-covered by prairie grass, two triceratops lurking behind a tree. They are nothing like typical prehistoric images, which tend to place battling dinosaurs front and center while dozens more prowl ominously in the background. Eight years ago, when Johnson teamed up with artist Jan Vriesen to craft the Ancient Colorado exhibit, they deliberately shifted the focus away from animals.

"I wanted to capture the feeling of a place," Johnson explains. "Animals are pretty rare in landscapes. If you go for a hike today, you're pretty excited when you see a big animal of any kind, and in general they're off in the distance. That's what these paintings are like." He steps up to the nearest one, instantly dwarfed by the 8-by-10-foot canvas. Each is a snapshot of what Colorado would have looked like in the distant past, 60, 150, 250 million years ago. "It is time travel. You're reconstructing a landscape no one's ever seen."

They look more alien than historic. The tufty-headed trees in Pole Forest resemble something out of a drawing by Dr. Seuss. Slimy Shoreline is even weirder -- clumps of mud-congealed bacteria and algae (what scientists call "stromatolites") dotting a coastline where the arid Red Rocks Park stands today, in the foothills west of Denver. "People don't think the Earth changes very much," says Johnson. "Climate is changing, continents are drifting, plants and animals are both evolving and going extinct ... and a place like Colorado can actually be many different kinds of places over geologic time."

All the images are rooted in meticulous research, every leaf, flower and shrub based on the fossil species found at 10 sites (one for each painting) in Colorado. A paleobotanist by training, Johnson conducts his research with rock hammer in hand, hiking dusty hillsides in boots and a straw hat. The fossils he unearths reveal slender ferns and broad leaves the color of old woodcuts.

Johnson's fondness for plants dates back to his childhood in Seattle, where he found plenty of petrified wood and fossil leaves, but few animals. At age 12, he started working with Wes Wehr, an artist, paleobotanist and volunteer curator at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Johnson's dual interests continued in college; he pursued a double major in geology and art before switching to full-time science after graduation. "I didn't have command of the (artistic) media ... but I realized you can always hire a great artist."

Enter Jan Vriesen. Science provides the backbone of the paintings, but as Johnson points out, "You still have to build it. You have to take the artistic leap from what you know from the data to what you think it might have looked like." Take Triceratops Swamp: The painting shows a 68-million-year-old fern-filled forest with two dinosaurs in the far distance. For inspiration, Johnson and Vriesen traveled to Alabama's Mobile Delta Swamp, a modern-day version of the ancient forest. There, Vriesen could observe the way sunlight hits the floor of a swamp and note the spacing of trees and bushes, while Johnson pointed out which plants he could paint, and which ones he would need to replace with the fossils found in Colorado.

After that, it's time to step back. "I don't want to micromanage," says Johnson. The composition of each painting, the particular shades of color, the lighting -- all of that is left up to Vriesen, so that later, when Johnson sees the paintings for the first time, "It's a surprise for me. ... You walk in, and it's just like going there."

]]>No publisherWildlifePoliticsProfiles2010/07/21 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleColorado's ancient pasthttp://www.hcn.org/articles/colorados-ancient-past
Using art and science to visualize lost landscapes.For Ancient Colorado, a collection of 10 paintings on display at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, paleontologist Kirk Johnson and artist Jan Vriesen used art and science to bring Colorado's prehistoric landscapes to life. This multimedia presentation accompanies the story, "Seeing the triceratops in the trees."

]]>No publisherWildlifeMultimediaVideo2010/07/19 07:00:00 GMT-6ArticleRanger danger?http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.11/ranger-danger
HCN investigates whether violence against National Park Service employees is increasing.National parks seem like places of refuge, far removed from urban crime and violence. But for at least the last decade, law enforcement rangers in the National Park Service have been among the federal law enforcement officers most likely to be injured or killed by assault. In 2009, descriptions of violent incidents in national parks ranged from “assault” and “interfering” to the somewhat more peculiar:

“Graffiti with white supremacist origins indicating violence against the government.”

“Subject took a position behind a boulder and pointed a pistol at the Rangers as they approached his illegal campsite.”

Since 1995, the nonprofit PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) has requested yearly Park Service reports on threats and violence against the agency’s employees. In May, the group reported that such incidents had increased 339 percent from 2008 to 2009. Although alarming, the trend, High Country News found, is actually the result of inconsistent data.

“We don’t have a good national reporting system,” says David Barna, chief of public affairs at the agency. “We’re trying to fix that.”

There’s no agreement across parks on what constitutes a crime worth mentioning, says retired Special Agent Paul Berkowitz. And some parks don’t report their incidents, because the publicity is bad for business.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesNational Park ServiceInfographic2010/06/21 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleDrilling on the greenhttp://www.hcn.org/articles/drilling-on-the-green
Residents of Battlement Mesa react to gas drilling in their community. Antero Resources plans to drill for natural gas right inside Battlement Mesa, an Exxon man camp turned retirement community. It's a prospect that has some residents apprehensive about the future.

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]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryColoradoMultimediaVideo2010/06/14 08:00:00 GMT-6ArticleThe rabbit coursehttp://www.hcn.org/issues/42.9/the-rabbit-course
An Oakland chef teaches students how to butcher bunnies for dinner. Samin Nosrat can butcher a rabbit in three minutes flat. Boning knife in hand, the chef stands surrounded by 12 eager students who watch her every move. On the countertop lies a raw rabbit; skinned and eviscerated, it resembles a deformed chicken, sans feathers. Nosrat lowers the knife. First come the legs, sliced off neatly at the pelvis. Then the shoulders, which promise to be tender. "Rabbit shoulders are like heaven compared to the leg," she explains. "They just sit there, barely held on (to the body) ... you could probably pick up a rabbit and pull off its arm."

Her audience is rapt, silent. The catering kitchen in Oakland, Calif., rented for this afternoon's "Rabbit Course" class, already smells like roasted meat; Nosrat has braised a pair of rabbit legs for the cooking demo later on. As for me -- listening via the speakerphone next to Nosrat's cutting board -- I can't help twitching as the cleaver descends with a whack! whack!

None of the students seem squeamish, though. Each has paid $99 for the lesson. Some are aspiring cooks. One is a hunter. And at least two plan to raise rabbits for their families.

If there's a common thread here, it's the urge to reclaim traditional skills that, in Nosrat's words, "every mom taught her daughter in the past." Nosrat was trained in Italy, where she spent two years working in restaurants, butcher shops and farm co-ops. There, she found that even many of the urbanites own plots of land in the countryside -- often handed down through the generations -- where they plant olive trees and raise livestock.

Such overlap is harder to find in the U.S. While the rural West still has longtime ranchers, farmers and hunters, most city residents have lost connection to meat production. It takes money now, and dedication, to salvage those skills. Nosrat's class is part of a growing trend, some of it bordering on entertainment: Avedano's Holly Park Market in San Francisco offers "Butchery for Adults" at $300 a head. Portland foodies can pay $75 to reduce a rooster from living bird to coq au vin. Near Seattle, about 20 people gathered at "Sacrificio" to butcher and cook a pig. And last November, the Art Institute of Portland hosted the $25-a-ticket "Livestock": Butchers cut up a cow while writers read aloud from essays about food. Attendees drank wine and munched on appetizers made from locally grown meat.

Rancher Chad Campbell finds it hard to believe that anyone would pay hundreds of dollars for a butchering class. "It blows my mind ... but I already know how to do it." Campbell is part of Colorado Homestead Ranches, a six-ranch co-op in the western part of the state that owns and operates a local USDA-inspected meat-processing plant. That's a rarity in modern ranching, where animals are generally shipped off for processing, sometimes to feedlots many states away. "I guess (the classes) make sense if (people want to learn) how butchering is done right," says Campbell. "And education like that is very important."

These "ethical butchering" classes rarely include the actual killing. (Nosrat's rabbits were slaughtered the week before, with a quick snap of the neck.) They're less about backyard pig-keeping than about teaching people to handle unprocessed meat bought directly from small farmers. Some farms offer additional courses in sausage-making or raising livestock.

Linda Worthman wants to go all the way. A retired biology teacher and public health researcher, she acquired a taste for rabbit in childhood, when her father, a "New York City executive who (liked to) garden," raised rabbits for the family table. Once Nosrat sautés the freshly-butchered rabbit, adding a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, Worthman has nothing but praise.

"Amazing. And the liver -- oh, boy! It just glows."

The hard part comes when the novice butchers are handed their own rabbits. "My (cutting) technique was closer to sawing, which is a no-no," Worthman says ruefully. "I will practice with chickens until I get (my own rabbits)." Less than a week later, Worthman set out to buy a couple of does to raise in her Berkeley city backyard. She's even signed up for a class on rabbit husbandry, which will cover an essential hole in her education: "Someone's gonna have to teach me how to kill a rabbit. ..."

]]>No publisherCommunities2010/05/21 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleA Swift SWIP hikehttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/a-swift-swip-hike
Hiking 500 miles of a transmission line route. With beans.A typical thru-hiker might walk 15-20 miles a day to finish a long trail. Adam Bradley managed 40 a day when he set the record for the 2,700-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 2009; so his latest escapade -- averaging 31 miles a day for 16 days -- was probably a breeze.

The 501-mile trek began in southern Idaho (near Twin Falls) on Earth Day and ended last Monday just north of Las Vegas, tracing the path of the 500 kilovolt Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP) Transmission Line. The project is expected to break ground this summer on the $550 million segment from Las Vegas to Ely (in central Nevada), to be completed in 2012. The rest — from Ely up to Idaho — will be built from 2011-2013.

The line has been hailed as the "backbone" of Nevada's emerging clean energy economy because it would deliver power from farflung renewable resources in areas without transmission to population centers. SWIP was originally conceived as a way to supply the Southwest with coal-fired power from Idaho, but those projects have since fallen through, and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has encouraged developers to start clean energy projects in reach of SWIP. Indeed, NV Energy — one of the main utilities that will be using SWIP — plans to connect several geothermal and solar projects to the completed transmission line.

But the Nevada
Wilderness Project (NWP) worries that all this development could impact wildlife habitat: Bradley's hike is a quirky way for the organization to publicize the clean
energy vs. conservation debate.

According to NWP, (which sponsored Bradley's trip),

(the trek passed) through high quality sage grouse habitat, large mammal travel corridors, canyons, dirt roads, ranches, neighboring towns, and areas that will be changed by the construction of the line. (Bradley) likely will be the last person to see the path of the line before construction begins this summer.

The group is cautiously optimistic about SWIP's impacts on wildlife such as sage grouse. The birds' population has dropped 90 percent over the last 100 years and US Fish and Wildlife is monitoring it for possible federal protection. SWIP's route will not cut through sage grouse courtship zones, and the transmission towers were designed to discourage raptors — sage grouse predators — from perching.

Still, the line will pass close to several wilderness study areas (Bluebell, South Pequop) and cross Nevada's Winecup Ranch — 250,000 acres of prime sage grouse habitat. The ranch is also where SWIP will intersect the proposed Ruby Pipeline, which would transport natural gas from Wyoming to Oregon. NWP is worried about the cumulative impacts of these projects — aside from the disturbance caused by construction, the gas line will be accompanied by a maintenance road that would open up the remote ranch to more visitors and cars.

NWP wants to work with Great Basin Transmission (the developer of SWIP) to mitigate the wildlife effects. For instance, in exchange for keeping the route through Winecup Ranch, NWP would like future solar and wind projects to be built on poor habitat with minimal effects on wildlife. Bradley, then, is great for generating media coverage. Aside from taking his own photos and videos (later posted on the web) along the way, he was shadowed by filmmakers who hope to create a short documentary of his trip. Staff members from NWP followed a similar route by car, going on sidetrips during the day and meeting with Bradley every night to blog his updates.

Those meetings also supplied Bradley with fresh water. As for food, Bradley told NWP that he prefers light, calorie-rich rations like dehydrated refried pinto beans:

I add these bean flakes to water and carry it in a special container while walking for about 30 minutes...You can also add extra virgin olive oil or Celtic sea salt...Upon reaching camp, I stir in crushed corn tortilla chips and slivers of sharp cheddar. Bam! You have cold beans.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryBlog Post2010/05/20 16:12:08 GMT-6ArticleA water hog, redeemedhttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/a-water-hog-redeemed
Tamarisk and native trees use the same amount of water."A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long."

So begins Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Tamarisk Hunter," a short story set in a dystopic future when humans must fight tamarisk for every drop of water. The story might be made up, but "73,000 gallons" a year is based on the belief that each tamarisk plant can guzzle up to 200 gallons of water a day.

As it turns out, that number is simply wrong. Last Wednesday the U.S. Geological Survey reported that tamarisk consume about the same amount of water as native cottonwoods and willows — 32 gallons a day. It's put a big dent in the idea that replacing tamarisk with native trees saves water.

Ever since the invasive plant (also known as saltcedar) began taking over riparian zones in the West, people have tried to get rid of it using fire, beetles and the occasional camel. Tamarisk displaces native vegetation; it decreases biodiversity and chokes up trails. Of course ripping up tamarisk frees up water for streams — but what happens if native trees grow in their place?

"I think one of the reasons why (our study is) surprising is because the value 200 gallons per day has been printed so many times in the popular press," says Pat Shafroth, a USGS research ecologist who helped prepare the report.

So where did that 200 number come from? The USGS traced it back to a paper published in 1987 whose authors never described how they got that result. A later study from 2007 calculated 32 gallons per plant.

Large tamarisk can grow to be two feet in diameter; most hover around 2-4 inches wide, and some will have dozens of branches coming off a central trunk. So it's hard to tell how much water a "typical" tamarisk needs, says Tim Carlson, Research and Policy Director of the Tamarisk Coalition, a Colorado-based group that works to control the plant. Soil conditions, salinity and climate also affect water use. So in general, scientists calculate a plant's average yearly water need based on the amount of land it covers. An acre covered in tamarisk, for example, would probably use enough water to cover that same land area to a depth of three feet.

Regardless of the actual numbers, what matters is that an acre of willows or cottonwoods would use the same amount of water. The Tamarisk Coalition got similar results in a study published last year. But Carlson and Shafroth point out that tamarisk can tap into deeper groundwater, which means they can live farther from riparian zones where native trees can't survive. And if you remove tamarisk there, the plant could be replaced by native grasses that need much less water.

Even in cases like this, there's no good research that proves water is saved in the long run, says Carlson. "But clearly there is the potential for savings…(and) common sense would tell you (the same)."
]]>No publisherWildlifeBlog Post2010/05/04 15:55:00 GMT-6ArticleNext stop: water on taphttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/next-stop-water-on-tap
Construction begins on the Eastern Navajo Waterline.This weekend, thousands of Navajos will pile their trucks with 55-gallon drums and drive to the nearest watering station. If they're lucky, the lines will be short, the coin-operated water pipes will work, and they'll return home with enough to drink, wash and cook for another week.

Hauling water is a common chore in the southern Navajo Nation, where many residents must drive long distances (up to 100 miles round-trip) to fill up their containers. The region is infamously dry: groundwater aquifers are deep, hard-to-reach and depleted faster than they can be replenished. The water, when it comes, is often salty. And until 2004 -- when the Navajo Nation won a settlement for 326,000 acre-feet from the San Juan River -- the Navajos had little access to surface water. (For detailed coverage of the battle over Navajo water rights, read Matt Jenkins' 2008 story "Seeking the Water Jackpot").

For some Navajos, the wait for running water is almost over. Last Monday marked the dedication ceremony for the Eastern Navajo Waterline, which will pipe groundwater from northern areas of the New Mexico half of the Nation (near Nageezi) to the water-starved southern part (around Pueblo Pintado).

Once construction completes in 2012, an estimated 6,000 residents will have water on tap in their homes. An additional 4,000 residents live widely scattered across the region and don't have the plumbing in place to connect to the pipeline — they may be served by new water stations that are more centrally located.

The redistribution of groundwater is just an interim measure. The Eastern Navajo Waterline is part of the much larger $870 million Navajo-Gallup Water Project, authorized by President Obama in the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 (see this HCN blog post from March 2009). By the time it's completed in 2022, the pipeline will bring water from the San Juan River and Cutter Reservoir (20 miles east of Bloomfield, NM) south to Gallup, NM.

It's uncertain just when the Eastern Navajo Waterline will be connected to the main Navajo-Gallup line, but one thing is for sure: water means liveability and economic development. Jason John, Principal Hydrologist with the Navajo Nation's Water
Management Branch hopes the switch to surface water will encourage more Navajos to move into the reservation. By 2040, the completed pipeline will serve an estimated 200,000 residents.

]]>No publisherWaterBlog Post2010/04/20 17:26:05 GMT-6ArticleThe Trouble with Wilburhttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/the-trouble-with-wilbur
When pigs go wild.There's nothing like a feral pig to blur the line between free food and pest management. Days after the Arizona Daily Starpublished a map showing feral pig populations around the state (along with a note that Arizona doesn't require licenses for hunting feral pigs), a dozen hunting parties converged on one of the hot spots: Redington, just north of Tucson. They didn't find what they were looking for, but they sure stressed out local rancher Stefanie Smallhouse:

Smallhouse said the only pigs regularly seen on the ranch are her mother-in-law's regular, domestic swine. She's afraid someone will shoot them, thinking they're wild.

The ranch previously had wild pigs, neighboring ranchers and hunting guides said, because they were released there in the 1980s. Smallhouse said she did not know what happened in the past - she only knows they rarely show up on her ranch anymore.

Feral pigs are not the same as javelinas--they're domesticated swine that escaped or were set free. Once in the wild, they quickly become ungulates from hell. According to zoologist Jack Mayer, pigs will eat almost anything with a calorie. That includes seeds, snakes, wild turkeys, baby lambs and kids (meaning goat kids, not the people variety, though they're not above eating human flesh: for vivid examples in fiction see Lost and Junot Diaz's "No Face"). In places with coastlines, feral pigs have been known to sneak up behind sea turtles during hatching time and swallow the eggs as they pop out of Mama Turtle.

With that kind of diet, it's no wonder feral pigs can get to be 200-300 pounds. The US population is 2-6 million, with half of those rooting around in Texas. Australia and Canada also have their share of pig infestations. Arizona, though, is lucky: pigs need surface water, so the state's hostile deserts keep populations in control.

Where there is water, the pigs wreak havoc. Their waste is a menace to water quality, they dig for roots and release sediment into streams. This is a particular problem in California's San Luis Obispo County, where pigs are threatening steelhead populations by damaging riparian zones. Local rangers are hunting and trapping the pigs with the hope that some of the meat can be donated to charity. This notion got quite a positive response on the comments section. One reader wrote,

Tough and fecund critters, those pigs, and I think they’re here to stay. Still, it might be nice to see weekly pig roasts to feed the needy there at the group picnic area at Laguna Lake Park.

"Kill em and grill em," agreed another reader called Spectator. "Let a bow hunt and barbecue result, with an entry fee and profits to fish and game."

If you're curious about wild pig recipes, keep in mind that they're much leaner than regular pigs. All that foraging sure builds up muscle mass. Then again, if you're stuck with a 300-lb carcass, here's a recipe for feral pig chile verde, to be served with "warm flour tortillas, shredded lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and cold Mexican beer."

]]>No publisherWildlifeBlog Post2010/04/08 14:25:00 GMT-6ArticleVoyage of the Plastikihttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/voyage-of-plastiki
Around the world on plastic bottles.Two weeks have passed since 12,000 plastic bottles began riding the waves from San Francisco to Sydney. This is no mini Pacific Garbage Patch--the bottles form the bulk of the Plastiki, a 60-foot sailing boat built from recycled materials.

Its big, flashy journey is intended to raise awareness about manmade pollution in the ocean. Perhaps the most famous example is the Northern Pacific Gyre, where thousands of pounds of plastic accumulate as bobbing trash islands (collectively referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). According to the New York Times, a 2006 United Nations report estimated that

every pound of plankton in the central Pacific Ocean is offset by about 6 pounds of litter...every square mile of ocean is home to nearly 50,000 pieces of litter, much of which tends to harm or kill wildlife that either ingests the plastic or gets trapped in discarded netting, which is just as common in the Northern Gyre as discarded soda bottles.

In contrast, everything about the Plastiki screams green. The mast is a former aluminum irrigation pipe, the sails were fashioned from repurposed plastic. Even the 12,000 plastic bottles that make up the hull are post-consumer products. There are solar panels and windmills on board, plus an organic food garden fertilized by human waste (generously supplied by the 6-member crew). As if that wasn't enough, the crew is drinking fresh water filtered from their own urine.

The entire venture is the brainchild of British banking heir David de Rothschild (who's also part of the crew). Between Twitter, Facebook, and the official blog, the journey is awash in publicity. Filmmaker Vern Moen is on board to document every moment. You can even track the boat's position in units of plastic bottles. As of Monday, April 5, the Plastiki Control Center read,

A lot of that plastic floats around in places you wouldn't expect. Take Puget Sound: research over the past 3 years found plenty of litter around all the Sound's beaches. It didn't matter if there was a city nearby. Even the uninhabited islands were ringed with junk.

It would be the ultimate irony if the Plastiki ended up as ocean trash. (After all, the hull is held together by an organic glue composed of cashew nut butter and sugar cane). Powered solely by sails, wind, and a small biodiesel engine, the Plastiki may run into problems in rough waters. “We don’t have the ability to get out of the way (of a storm),” said de Rothschild. “So what we need is to have enough confidence in the vessel to say, ‘Right, a storm is coming through, we’ll put up a little storm jib and hunker down and let it go over.’ ”

]]>No publisherRecreationBlog Post2010/04/05 09:50:00 GMT-6ArticlePopcorn Activismhttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/need-title
New documentaries put Western issues on the national stage.The trailer for the new documentary Gasland lasts all of 15 seconds: a man turns on the kitchen tap. He holds a match up to the flowing water and FWOOSH--foot-high flames leap toward the ceiling. Dramatic, yes, but perhaps old news to Westerners who know the possible dangers of natural gas drilling. Thanks to a slew of recent independent films, issues once considered predominantly Western--like water contaminated by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and the return of wolves--are making their way to the national stage.

Another film, Haynesville,was screened at the prestigious SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. Haynesville brings us to the largest natural gas field in America, revealing the impacts on the local communities of Louisiana.

The third documentary, Lords of Nature: Life in a Land of Great Predators (set mostly in the American West), chronicles the role of large predators in ecosystem management. "Ever since Darwin," intones the narrator in the trailer, "predation has been proposed as one of the evolutionary drivers of the diversity of life." But now, as scientists find hard evidence to back up that theory, the essential role of wolves, cougars and bears is becoming more broadly recognized (despite some opposition from local communities). "The great predators have all but vanished from sight, just as (their) value...comes into focus." Lords of Nature won the official 2009 selection at the American Conservation Film Festival.

Got a tip on other recent films about Western issues? Post them below in the comments section.